The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2)

by Prue Batten

  He passed through the kitchens leaving a trail of moist footprints behind, and a communal shudder of dislike, even fear, passed amongst the shoulders of those who handled the pots, spices, meats and grains within the precinct.

  Oblivious, he ran quickly up the stairs. His booted feet tapped on the marble and his heartbeat rattled along with the sound, a syncopated rhythm. Some morning delight, he thought and then gave a low chuckle. Well no, afternoon delight actually. His anticipation wound him tighter than a clock spring and he bent to slip the key into the lock and turned it with a flourish. As he pulled the key out and placed it in his pocket, he was surprised but not alarmed to see his hands, usually steady and strong, shaking like those of an ancient or a babe. It was nothing - it only underlined his anticipation. He took a deep breath and pushed the door wide.

  The room was not big - more of an attic, perhaps servant quarters at some time, for there were indeed back stairs which led up. But the small space was empty. Grey light filled the chamber and alighted on a shard of glass lying in the middle of the floor. The downpour outside thundered on the tiles above Luther’s head and blood performed a likeminded dance, pounding through his veins to his head and suffusing his face with a dangerous flush. He saw the open window with the pools of moisture as rain dribbled under the eaves onto the floor and he noticed a pigeon walking back and forth, ducking its head, burbling, warning the man away. The cry Luther gave as he whipped the dagger from his belt began as a low growl and wound higher and higher up the scales until it burst forth in a frustrated, furious howl and as the howl echoed, the dagger which had flown through the air with the rising solfa, found its mark and pierced the pigeon to the floor. Luther left the room in a swirling rush, a pile of soft feathers settling around the poor bird in the likeness of a shroud.

  The clock spring stretched thinner.

  He ran out to the front moorings and commandeered one of the Di Accia gondolas, ordering the gondolier to pole as fast as he could if he valued his life. The gondolier needed no urging, for the look on the thug’s face spoke of murder and mayhem. Within minutes, or so it seemed, they had reached the bottom of the Calle del Vetro and Luther grunted to the gondolier to wait.

  The shop was closed so Luther hammered on the glass, the windowpanes vibrating. The glassmaker came out of the fabricca at a run, wiping his face. ‘Signor Luther, come in.’ The man bowed, holding the door wide. ‘The goods are ready. I was just packing them. Would you be so kind to come out the back while I finish?’

  He turned and hurried away, Luther stalking behind like some death reaper.

  Luther’s hands fiddled in his coat pockets, playing nervously, angrily, with the contents. Curse the man, the paperweights should have been packed and ready! Luther could see nothing but the elusive naked body of Adelina in his mind. Behir, she’s played me for a fool. She had done nothing but lure him and tease him since Madam had drawn her into their lives. The pain in his body grew and the anger began to erupt. The heat in the fabricca hit him like a wall of fire as he watched the wretched artisan taking a length of string in shaking hands, his back to Luther. He fumbled and fiddled as he tried to wrap the parcel suitably and halfway through, he grabbed his red paisley square and wiped his dripping forehead and sweating hands.

  Luther’s temper exploded as the heat of the room, the furnaces, the flames, the fires of hell seared his nostrils and burned at his brain. In the red of the fires he saw Adelina’s hair.

  The clock spring broke. Without a thought of guilt or consequence, the garotte came out and was strung quickly over the neck in front of him. He pulled some coals from the fires onto the floor and thrust a few torn cloths on top. Grabbing the parcel he pulled the door between the showroom and the fabricca shut behind him as fledgling flames began to glow and lick at wooden benches and boxes. The street was as empty as a desert as he hurried quickly to the gondola and requested the same speed back to the palazzo.

  Chapter Forty

  Adelina woke to an empty room. Lying still, her hands immediately went to her pregnant belly. Her baby arched under her fingers like a cat being stroked. A tear crept out under her eyes as she thought of her unborn child, her lost lover and her own wounded spirit, so lately battered to a pulp. She eased back the bedcovers and looked at the body that was now a startlingly ugly blend of purple, yellow and blue stains. Walking to the mirror hanging on the wall in its crackelure gold frame, she stared at the floor, afraid to confront her visage.

  Seconds passed as she watched the tears drip to form a puddle at her feet and she wondered briefly if she was having a critical fit of the vapours. Her head flew up in denial and she could do little else but confront her own image.

  The hazel eyes, slightly red, stared back. Her beautiful face with the skin like peaches and the bee-stung lips was completely unmarked. Amazingly, she had no shadows of exhaustion under her eyes nor deep furrows ploughed by distrait.

  She knew it was the Faeran who had smoothed away as much as he could of her troubles and wondered if he knew that lately she had been a friend of Liam, his brother. But no, why would he? Who would have told him? Gallivant? She raised an eyebrow. Maybe.

  She remembered the previous night when the Faeran had helped her up after her precipitous slide down the roof. He had looked into her eyes with his own dark ones and she had felt something. Not an attraction she didn’t think, but interest and solicitude. The kind of gentling she had craved for weeks and which the hob in his way had tried to give, the kind that had been such a part of Kholi Khatoun. Kholi would have liked this man, he was steadier than his brother, earthier, less arrogant. And briefly she had noticed he was uncomfortable - either with himself or a weight that he carried.

  Adelina moved away from the mirror and found towels set by a bowl of warm water. It occurred to her that she was in the care of Others and like to be safer than she had ever been. And as the thought enlarged, she took a huge shaky breath and another calmer one.

  The water smelt of lavender and gardenia and she stripped off her ripped underwear and washed every part of her abused body till it squeaked. On her bed lay the garments Phelim had kindly clothed her with the night before - a pair of jodhpurs, her boots, a black sweater. She found a brush and pulled it through the soft, copper curls and looking in the mirror again, was surprised at even greater improvement.

  She noted a tray on the table near the balcony doors and found fresh bread, confit, grapes and unbelievably, a teapot filled with hot tea - hot, sweet tea. It was like nectar and revived as if it were spirit in her veins, enough for her to begin to look around in more detail - at Gallivant’s bed, at the chaise where Phelim had slept.

  And at the robe swinging from a hook on the side of an armoire. The clean, almost completed robe that was the cause of her triumphs and her tragedies. It beckoned and she went to it as an artist is pulled to the canvas. A stroke here, a stitch there - all conspiring to create the masterpiece.

  An hour passed as she stitched. She indulged in the feeling of security that surrounded her and she paused to rub her back and speak to the babe. ‘Mama’s tired, little one. I need to rest.’

  ‘You should, definitely. If you are to persist in your plans then you must indeed rest.’ Gallivant pushed open the door and walked in laden with black clothes. Behind him, Phelim kicked the door shut, his arms equally loaded.

  Adelina eyed the hob beadily. ‘I must persist and you know it.’

  ‘Huh, I know you have an iron will.’

  ‘Gallivant, I shall go to the Gate and then we shall see... is that good

  enough for you?’

  ‘I don’t agree...’

  Adelina instantly threw down the stumpwork robe and faced the hob. ‘You don’t have to agree with me because this isn’t your business. It’s mine. And whatever I do, I can do it so much better without your precious comments. For Aine’s sake, Gallivant, just leave it alone!’

  The hob stood stock still, almost hidden by the pile of dark silks and satins. Phelim dared not move
either as the air felt solid with Adelina’s anger and resentment. The emotion erupting from her lips came from a deeper hurt than frustration at the hob, he was sure. The woman had been raped... she should be filled to bursting with anger and hatred at the world at large. Add it to the loss of her friends and her lover and it was a wonder she was sane enough to embroider at all. With tact he began to remove the piles of silks from the hob’s arms as the fellow smiled gratefully. ‘Adelina,’ Phelim gentled her, defusing the moment. ‘This is our Ball attire. We have a dance to attend, a Gate to find and some people to meet. We are going to a Ball at the Ca’ Specchio. I have a feeling...’

  As he spoke he noticed Gallivant glancing at this beautiful woman. She glared back, stony-eyed. He could imagine with no trouble at all, exactly what the hob was thinking. Sink me Needle Lady, don’t disengage from me, you need me more than ever because you see the Faeran has had a feeling.

  Chapter Forty One

  Gallivant and Phelim had spent that morning searching for the Ca’ Specchio in line with Phelim’s intuition. Gallivant trotted ahead on frenetic legs, frequently walking backwards to deliver part of the conversation and then running into people and having to turn back to apologise. Phelim grinned as another fountain of apologies poured down with the rain over the heads of the unfortunate public who had toes trodden on or shopping dislodged. Finally he reached forward and grabbed the hob by the arm.

  ‘Gallivant, slow down. I have long legs and you are covering the ground faster than myself. Nothing is to be gained by rushing.’ He began to wave his hand in front of his body.

  ‘Don’t you mesmer me. I promise I’ll heed your words. It’s just when I’m agitated I become fast and frantic. It’s always been a problem.’

  Phelim removed his hand and thrust it in his pocket. ‘Truth to tell I think we shall find the Ca’ Specchio in no time, for here is the Fondamenta Minotto.’

  Before them ran a broad walk on the edge of the Rio del Malcanton. The canal was bridged at either end with handsome enclosed structures. Gallivant stood mercifully still as he looked around. ‘Sink me but what an elegant place. I think if the rain ever stopped here and the sun shone, that it could be a city filled with light. The water would reflect so much, wouldn’t it?

  ‘Indeed and there is the place we want. How could one miss it?’ Phelim could see what Ebba had meant when she said it was supposed to be the most elegant palace in Veniche. The Ca’ Specchio sat in the middle of the fondamenta in its freshly painted apricot glory - a colour only softened and enhanced by the drizzle blurring the lines of the rest of Veniche.

  The hob’s breath sucked in. ‘Do you realise the Palazzo di Accia is around that bend? There we were dashing all around and it was closer than we could have imagined. Damn it, but I don’t like that madwoman being so close.’

  ‘She’ll be even closer this evening, Gallivant, so we must get used to it. Shall we go over?’

  They hailed a gondola and asked to be taken to the entrance landing of the Specchio. The craft threaded through the channel markers and moored at the landing and the two companions mingled with all those artisans and merchants who came and went. But there were Others too, unseen by mortals, drifting in and out of the glassed doors that opened onto the landing. Phelim studied the magnificent people going about their business dressed in black, drawing no attention to themselves, except for the occasional small prank - drops of mortar on heads, a bag of nails tipped on the floor and such, but over all a dreaminess wound like a lacy fog - a mesmer designed to put all in a gentle mood. Even the hob seemed overcome. He walked into the entrance hall with a smile on the visage that had for so long been pleated and tucked.

  The chequerboard floor tiles gleamed. Two perfectly symmetrical stairwells curved around the walls to meet on the first floor landing. At either end of the stair, unlit black iron flambeaus stood sentinel. On the ground floor and positioned against the wall, equidistant from each staircase, a massive oak table stood supporting an urn of gargantuan size in which a florist was attempting to arrange flowers. She stood on a ladder and manhandled large branches of white magnolia and dogwood and vast long stemmed lilies. Broken petals and chips of stem and bark lay around the ladder legs and the smell of Raji lilies began to fill the hall. Staff ran up and down the stairs, carting buckets of coal, logs, trugs of ivory candles.

  The walls of the entrance were bare, the paintwork ivory. Nothing but the flambeaus, the floral arrangement and the wrought balustrading decorated the space. It was as though it waited for the bedecked guests of Carnivale. Phelim and Gallivant stepped around the frantic servitors and artisans to go up the stair but two largely built men blocked their path. ‘No one up the stair who ‘asn’t got a pass.’ A wooden staff barred the way.

  ‘Mesmer him,’ Gallivant whispered.

  ‘’Ere, what d’you say?’ The other man went to pull at the hob’s shoulder.

  Phelim backed off, pushing the hob before him, the bag of souls resting with gentle warmth against the blisters and weals at his ribs so that for a moment he wondered what it was they reacted to. Pulling Gallivant, he turned his back on the guards and began walking away with the hob chiding him roundly for not being more Faeran. But he forbore to retaliate.

  Had he looked back to the landing at the top of the stair, he would have seen a tall, elderly man leaning on the rail watching them with interest. Jasper slapped his palms on the wrought iron and with a swish of his black riding coat turned and entered the ballroom invisibly behind a trail of maids with mops and rags.

  ‘We could have found the portal, Phelim. Honestly!’ They searched the landing for their gondolier. ‘At least if we knew the layout it would help Adelina more. Everything helps, you know.’

  ‘You care for her, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked at Phelim with bruised eyes and sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to, you know. I was just going to mind her as Lhiannon and Jasper had asked but the woman has this way about her. It’s not just her beauty nor her artistry even. She has lost everything and born it as well as she can and Aine she has suffered. On top of that, somehow the silly wench made a promise to Others that she would avenge the loss of Liam and Elriade, a promise which by its very nature becomes sacred. Phelim, it weighs so heavily upon her; she truly struggles with the dilemma. And then there is this most recent travesty.’ Gallivant had once again begun his ‘fast’ mode, and Phelim could not, indeed would not interrupt. ‘She shows no obvious reaction,’ the hob said and was silent for a miniscule moment. ‘Well no, I suppose her anger earlier was reaction, wasn’t it? I wish I could spirit her away from all this. To think she must take Severine’s life, for its what they all want, isn’t it? It’ll be the last straw. Oh, how I wish I had another lamp! That’s how we escaped from Mevagavinney, you know - Aladdin’s lamp. It started as whimsy. She had sewn Aladdin onto the robe and I felt he needed a tiny lamp and we had a gold charm and I wondered what if the charm was a real lamp and I had this feeling and of course I was right. Now I would like to rub a lamp and wish her far away from Veniche and all her troubles.’ He took a breath at last and was quiet.

  ‘Gallivant,’ Phelim said with due respect. ‘They are monumental troubles, as you say. But perhaps it is Fate that she must do this, go through with the whole thing. All of us have a path we must tread and sometimes, no matter the cost, we cannot divert. It may be the same for Adelina.’ And myself, he thought, for things changed with Ebba's revelation and then again when I saw Adelina. How they changed. ‘All we can do is support her and support each other. What will be will be. In the meantime, I think we need to buy ball-gowns and suitable men’s attire.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gallivant sighed again, as if the world were full of such sighs. ‘We must shop. Shall we try that alley near the inn?’ Phelim let the hob lead, it suited him to let the fellow rabbit a little longer, for he himself had his own thoughts, his own grief, his own desires and it did not serve to dwell on them.

  ***

  What a maladjusted bunc
h we were. Every one of us in this tale has had baggage that could have reached the heights of Mt. Goti. But I suppose that is the truth of life. Our experiences and how we cope with them, good or bad, creates that mountain. Myself? I had almost reached the apogee of my endeavours. If I allowed myself to wallow in amongst the satchels and bags of my past experiences, I would never be able to drag myself out to decide what I must do and do it.

  I meant what I said to Gallivant; I needed to do this on my own. That is not to say I didn’t appreciate what my friends had done. How could I not? But now I needed to go on alone and that was an end to it. When Adelina the embroiderer sets her mind to something, no matter how hurt and despoiled she may be, she will do it.

  So my friend, time for the penultimate journal. On with the treasure hunt - it is an easy little thing to find once you have replaced the previous book under the petit-point. Go to the ivory coloured fan in the bride’s hands... a perishingly ghastly thing to embroider in whipped spider-web stitch. I truly wasn’t in the mood I can tell you but needs must and it was a mammoth diversion from the anxieties that threatened to tip me over the edge. Underneath the fan is a thin ivory pamphlet stitched with a simple binding.

  Only small…

  Chapter Forty Two

  Severine sat facing her mirror. The maid had finished her hair and it slid in a smooth ebony sweep up her neck and around her crown, laced beautifully with fine gold wire studded with tiny emeralds. She ran her hands down the alabaster neck, noting the smoothness, the absence of age, and began her toilette, applying maquillage with great skill - enhancing, concealing, like an artist at work. Her grey eyes glistened with an excitement she could not hide, nor did she want to. She knew that such anticipation honed her beauty, taking it to even more remarkable heights. As she opened the ivory containers, she ran over the events of her ascendency. Gertus, ah... Best to forget. The four cantrips and the ring. The silk seller and Liam... Pop and I had two souls.